Dead & Company To Host HeadCount Participation Row

Tonight, Dead & Company kick off a lengthy Fall Tour at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York. After a night off, the band – which features Grateful Dead members Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, bassist Oteil Burbridge and guitarist John Mayer – bring the tour to Madison Square Garden in NYC for performances on Saturday and Sunday. HeadCount will host Participation Row at the MSG shows this weekend.

Six charities will have a presence on HeadCount’s Participation Row at MSG: the Rex Foundation a charitable non-profit established by members of the Grateful Dead in 1983, the bone marrow donor screening organization Love Hope Strength, environmental groups Reverb and Mom’s Clean Air Force, the Multidisciplinary Associations for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and HeadCount, which specializes in voter registration and civic engagement through music.

Instrument makers D’Angelico and Remo have donated custom-made Dead & Co. items to be signed by the band and auctioned in select cities on the tour to support the charities. Similar items generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in Participation Row auctions at the Lockn’ festival and the Grateful Dead 50th Anniversary concerts, where a signed D’Angelico guitar sold for an eye-popping $526,000.

If you’re attending the Dead & Company shows at MSG, head to the concourse outside sections 108 to 118 to check out Participation Row. Concertgoers will be invited to visit any of the organizations and take socially-conscious actions such as registering to vote, joining the bone-marrow donation registry, or petitioning for tighter environmental regulations. For every action completed, the attendee’s name will be entered into a raffle to win a Dead & Company tour poster signed by the band.